The 2018 Winter Olympics, which I loved watching, was full of speeches by gold and medal winners about that Western ideal of “not giving up.” Whenever I hear these speeches I wonder what all the Olympians or wannabe Olympians who did give up and quit for whatever reasons (health, finances, relationships, etc.) would say if they were interviewed. Of course, they never are interviewed because we love the winner who defeats all odds. “Giving up” doesn’t play or sell well for the media.

Why does the West in particular have this obsession with not giving up? Why this determination to not be a “quitter”? What is this obsession with hearing the story of the one who won’t stop?

These are all questions I’m asking because it seems that we in the West especially are averse to approaching the Void, the place of ultimate surrender. The Olympics always brings this into stark relief for me.

It is often noted that in traditional cultures around the world, those who undergo initiations to become spiritual leaders of their people, have to simulate or approach death in some way—death being an event of ultimate surrender. There are examples of having to survive in the wild alone or fast for weeks or sleep in a tomb for months. In one culture, initiates had to jump into a mass of swirling water at the top of a waterfall. If they struggled, they either drowned or went over the top of the waterfall and died. However, if they surrendered, they flowed with an underwater current that took them through a series of rock fissures behind the waterfall that essentially functioned as a naturally-made waterslide and that jettisoned them safely out onto the lake near the bottom of the waterfall.

Sandra Ingerman talks about how the Earth and many people on the Earth are currently undergoing powerful initiations. Initiations call us to surrender: to let go of what we think we know—even spiritual knowledge—and to let die patterns that have worked in the past for us but are no longer what works for the New Spirit that is emerging. Initiations invite us to jump into the Void, the place of Deep Unknowing, and give up our egoic holds on all things we think we can control.

Initiations ask us to Give Up.

Now giving up in this sense doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means, rather, shifting from doing into Being. Of becoming one with the Flow. Of Trusting the Greater Purpose even when what is happening on the surface makes absolutely no sense to us and all our instincts are telling us not to surrender.

As Ingerman says, “We can’t think our way through an initiation. We can’t struggle our way through.” We can’t Olympic-sized power our way through either. We must surrender by going deeper and then surrender again, going even deeper into our True Nature.

One reason we avoid the Void is because we are afraid of emptiness, of annihilation. We try to fill the space of the Void with anything and everything.

But the Void is not empty. It is full of energy. It is just unmanifest energy. From this place, anything is possible. I often call it the Pregnant Void, and any woman who has been pregnant and given birth knows that there is only so much you can do to help the process along. The process itself is in control and for much of the pregnancy and birthing a lot of what a woman does is surrender.

What initiations (crises of all kinds: illness, career, relationships, loss, politics (!)) are inviting you to surrender into the Void?

How do you embrace the Void? By surrendering.

How are ways you can surrender?

Create space in your life.

Meditate.

Live in the now.

Accept not knowing how or when or why.

Enjoy the moment.

Breathe. Breathe again.

Rest.

Rest some more.

Repeat the mantra: All is well. All is well. All is well.

​What are ways you can think of to surrender and merge with the Void, trusting and knowing you’ll get through this passage, coming out the other side, with more Oneness and Love?

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